My awk user function isn't working in a bash script - bash

Question

I am trying to write an awk script in ubuntu as a non-admin user. It takes four terminal statements and throws them into variables. Those variables then are sent to a function I made and it spits out an average number and prints it.
Here is my script:
#!/usr/bin/gawk -f
BEGIN{
one = ARGV[1];
two = ARGV[2];
three = ARGV[3];
four = ARGV[4];
function average_funct(one, two, three, four)
{
total = one + two;
total = total + three;
total = total + four;
average = total / 4;
return average;
}
print("The average of these numbers is " average_funct(one, two, three, four));
}
To run it I have been using this:
./myaverage4 2 7 4 3
Which results in this error message:
gawk: ./myaverage4:9: function average_funct(one, two, three, four)
gawk: ./myaverage4:9: ^ syntax error
gawk: ./myaverage4:15: return average;
gawk: ./myaverage4:15: ^ `return' used outside function context
If anyone could help me figure out the problem that would be awesome.

Answer 1

You can't declare a function inside the BEGIN section or any other action block. Move it outside of all action blocks.
function foo() { ... }
BEGIN { foo() }
I assume you have some reason for writing your code the way you did rather than the more obvious and adaptable to any number of arguments:
function average_funct(arr, total, cnt)
{
for (cnt=1; cnt in arr; cnt++) {
total += arr[cnt]
}
return (--cnt ? total / cnt : 0)
}
BEGIN {
print "The average of these numbers is", average_funct(ARGV)
}